Reading Setting Material

The impression that I get, right or wrong, is that the majority of the players in the current game haven't read the bulk of the setting bible produced for the campaign. That's not a complaint, just an observation. I suspect further that a great many players generally don't read up on the campaign setting for the games in which they're playing (unless they also GM in that setting). Now, a large part of this is that they don't want to get into the campaign secrets (and published works are rather poor at segregating player knowledge from GM knowledge). Other reasons include a lack of time, or a simple lack of inclination. (And, let's be fair, most of the material just ain't that interesting - in order to properly flesh out a world you need to detail such things as the constellations, the calendars, measurement systems, and so on, which really aren't that exciting, and which generally get ignored during play.

I see this as having two consequences. Firstly, it means that games set in the Forgotten Realms, Middle Earth (if the RPG hadn't collapsed), the Star Wars, Star Trek or Babylon 5 universes (and latterly Buffy and Angel) have a significant advantage, in that many if not most role-players have had some exposure to these settings from other sources, whether the associated books, movies, series, or computer games. This means that players can instantly recognise some elements of a setting (Jawas are recognisable in a way that the Aspected never will be), and should have some sort of common ground from which to work. On the other hand, the players will also come to the table with some pre-set notions of what Star Wars really is, and if these differ from the GM's vision (or the GM deliberately wants to do something different), the result can be jarring and unsatisfying, not unlike the reactions many fans had to Episode I.

The other consequence of this is that a prospective world designer has to be aware of the mindset of players in the game. If you include elves in the setting, no matter how you detail them in the campaign bible, when a player portrays such a character you will almost certainly get Drizzt, Legolas, or the standard tree-hugging hippie. Dwarves will be hard-drinking Scotsmen, Halflings will either be Hobbits or Kender, and so on and so forth.

That's a large part of the reason that I wanted all-new PC races for the Tollis campaign (that and I really wanted rid of the 'gay elf' thing, a goal in which I succeeded). For the most part, the races in Tollis have analogues in the standard races, although they're not obvious (I used the rather interesting archetypology articles on rpg.net to get at the underlying themes behind the races, and then built new races on those same themes). Also for the most part, I was happy with the way that the races were used and were portrayed.

The problem with the new races, however, is that they don't have familiarity with PCs. Any D&D player (or person who has read or seen Lord of the Rings) can tell you what an Elf is. It's not so certain that they'll get what an Aspected is, as noted above. I think perhaps this is one of the reasons that the new group is almost entirely Human (although it's also entirely possible that everyone just wanted to play a Human, either way I'm not complaining).

In case anyone's interested, the analogues for the standard races are as follows:

Aspected are both elves and orcs. The source articles suggest that the elves were derived from angels, the orcs from the fallen angels. In both cases, they represent the better and worse aspects of humanity. The aspected embody both of these, or at least that was the intention.

Satorans are dwarves. The dwarf allegedly represents man's lust for possessions. The satorans instead represent man's lust for knowledge and for pleasure.

The Ogrekin represent gnomes, the trickster race.

The Sloth are hobbits. This one, I think, should be fairly obvious.

The Whimlings are kender. Much like the sloth, they represent the halfling, which in turn represents us (since they also see the world from the point of view of the 'little guy', and not the powers that be). However, whereas the Sloth is intimidated by the world and retreats from it, the Whimling is enchanted and curious.

The Vaggatz are closest to half-orcs, although with less of the being caught between two worlds thing, and more of the noble savage about them.

The other thing I had in mind was the notion of the generations in this. In this regard, Humans represented young adults, just taking their place in the world. The Ogrekin represent the older generation, having taught the young adults they now step aside. The Vaggatz represent the younger brother, a few steps behind you, while the Orcs are a much younger sibling, still wild and destructive. Whimlings are, of course, young children. The Aspected and Satorans are also young adults, but they are less mature adults than the Humans. The Aspected, under this system, represent the totally self-centred adult, more interested in getting ahead than helping others. The Satoran is the pleasure-driven loser who spends his time in a drink or drug-fuelled haze. Finally, the Sloth are those adults who just want to get their heads down, get on with their lives, and not rock the boat.